Technical and vocational education in Malaysia: policy, leadership, and professional growth on Malaysia women

Technical and Vocational Education (TVE) is facing new challenges in an increasingly competitive global context. The continuing under representation of women in engineering fields at semi-skilled and high-skilled levels is receiving renewed attention. This paper explores women as part of special population in Malaysia who desire to be placed as equal to men in Malaysian context. Policy, leadership, and professional growth are discussed comprehensively to support Malaysian females’ involvement in engineering disciplines, one of Technical and Vocational Education (TVE) programs in Malaysia. This paper also explores issues and challenges facing by Malaysian women in order to be recognized by the sub-ordinates, peers, leaders and society within male-dominated professions and environment

Profile of female students of engineering universities in Mexico and Spain

Gender studies in higher education have emerged in parallel to reflections and rising feminist movement. The main objectives of academic feminism are related to women's visibility improvement as well as soft skills developers’ roles. But a gap in TECH studies can be detected. Women studies in higher education are mostly related to life and social sciences, behavioral, journalism and information, business and management and law, in contrast to engineering, architecture, manufacturing, construction, ICT or any kind of TECH studies. Thus, the main objective of this work is related to survey design in order to develop a qualitative research to inquire about TECH higher education, female population profile, both at UdG-CUALTOS (Guadalajara, Mexico) and UPC (Barcelona, Spain).This profile can provide some influent identity elements, related to perceptions and expectations of women-TECH, deemed appropriate from their professions as engineers. From these results, it should be possible to draw gender alternatives for future generations in TECH environmentsPostprint (published version

Engineering, a course of men: the inversion of that trend

Apresentado em "ASEE’s 123rd Annual Conference & Exposition - New Orleans, LA - June 26 - 9, 2016"Traditionally, engineering courses are more pursued by men than by women, although, also traditionally, there are exceptions, like for example Biological Engineering courses. In recent years, Higher Education in Portugal has faced profound changes, namely as far as the number of students, the enlargement of the educational network and the curricular structure of courses are concerned. It is known that the rise in the general number of students was also accompanied by an increase in the number of women attending Portuguese Higher Education Institutions. This paper aims to analyze whether these changes have also changed the choice of women/men in engineering courses. Therefore, preferences and admissions from the last five years in fifteen engineering courses of a Portuguese University were analyzed. This analysis aims at understanding if there are courses that tend to be more chosen by women, as well as the incidence of the Demand Satisfaction Index (here DSI) in their choices. The DSI is the ratio between the number of applicants in the 1st option and the number of existing vacancies per pair institution/ course, in the 1st phase of the national competition for higher education access. For the academic years 2010/2011 to 2014/2015 we analyzed, for each course, the number of applicants and the number of students placed (by gender), the application option and the average grades of the admitted applicants. This analysis showed that the percentage of women has increased in both: in the number of applicants and in the number of admissions. The number of female applicants increased 4.7% in the general number of applicants for engineering courses and 3.4% in the number of female admitted students, among the total number of admissions, in the same period. This convergence of the number of students of both genders contradicts the historical data, so it is important to understand its reasons. Therefore, each one of the courses was analyzed independently and we verify that in courses where the demand was already mainly female, that demand was further strengthened by women. In courses which have traditionally more male attendance, the percentage of women has been continuously approaching that of men. In conclusion, the conjunction of the growing attractiveness of engineering courses (which makes the admission more competitive) and the fact that, in general, women present better access grades to higher education is claimed as an explanation for this evolution.This work has been financed by FEDER funds through the Competitivity Factors Operational Programme - COMPETE: POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007136 and POCI-01-0145-FEDER- 007043 and FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the Project Scope: UID/CEC/00319/201

Tinkering, Tailoring, and Transforming: Retention of Scientific Excellence of Women Researchers through WiSER mentoring

Women are under-represented in academic grades in Higher Education, but more so in science, engineering and technology (SET) disciplines. This under-representation of women undermines the potential gains the community of science can attain by utilising the skills, talents and knowledge of all those who are trained to work in SET. The European Union statistics show that women are equally represented at undergraduate stage but become progressively more under-represented in the more senior academic positions. This article presents a case study of a mentoring programme in the Centre for Women in Science and Engineering Research (WiSER) at Trinity College Dublin. Its aim is the recruiting, retaining, returning and advancing women in academic science, engineering and technology. WiSER seeks to develop sustainable practices to ensure that women can compete in research in an equitable manner with male colleagues using their scientific expertise, knowledge and potential. The outcomes of the programme are reported for mentors, mentees and Trinity College and retention data are given for the women a year after the programme ended

Women and Men in Science, Engineering and Technology: The UK Statistics Guide 2010

The UK Statistics Guide on Women in Science, Engineering, Technology and the Built Environment (SET) provides detailed data analysis using a conceptual framework for gender segregation in SET. The Guide aims to aid future benchmarking and monitoring of progress against a number of indicators from the areas of secondary and higher education, vocational training, employment and gender pay, leadership and public engagement. It illustrates the existence, even in 2009, of the gender and SET ‘leaky pipeline’ by showing where, in SET education and employment, the biggest attrition of women occurs, and how the participation of women has changed in recent years. It presents a complex picture, demonstrating not only the well known under-representation of women in SET, but also a multilayered interplay between gender and other factors such as ethnicity and disability, types of occupations and industries, and educational and employment career stages. This Guide is a reference document and we hope it will enable practitioners, policy makers, employers, researchers and activists in gender and equality to review the current situation, and identify where the strengths, gaps and challenges lie

The glass ceiling : is it a state of mind?

Much is written in the literature and press about women having to break through the glass ceiling, but is there indeed any truth in this theory? For some women, working their way up the promotion ladder can be a challenge, but is it really as difficult as it is perceived? It would be naïve to think that all women are as ambitious as to want to break through the glass ceiling, and indeed in certain categories of employment such as advertising and marketing, they do appear to have made their mark, but science, engineering and technology, do not seem to attract females in the same numbers. We would argue that this lack of advancement is not necessarily due to a lack of opportunity. This paper addresses the role of women in science, engineering, and technology, assessing the support mechanisms offered to them to succeed in their chosen occupations. The investigation identifies factors that have led to women achieving senior levels in higher education, business, and government in the UK, thus making it through the glass ceiling. The methodology undertaken in this study includes, desk-based research, analysis of surveys, observations from literature search and surveys, and interviews/case studies of a number of prominent and internationally successful women; and final conclusions. All comprise the three components of the Triple Helix - influence of government through legislation, uptake in academia, and attendant support mechanisms, and impact in industry

The role of gender in students’ ratings of teaching quality in computer science and environmental engineering

Students’ ratings of teaching quality on course units in computer science and environmental engineering at a large Swedish university were obtained using the Course Experience Questionnaire; 8,888 sets of ratings were obtained from men and 4,280 sets were obtained from women over ten academic years. There were differences in the ratings given by students taking the two programs; in particular, teachers tended to receive higher ratings in subjects that were less typical for their gender than in subjects that were more typical for their gender. There were differences in the ratings given to male and female teachers, differences in the ratings given by male and female students, and interactions between these two effects. There was no systematic trend for students to give different ratings to teachers of the same gender as themselves compared with teachers of the other gender. Nevertheless, without exception even the statistically significant effects were small in magnitude and unlikely to be of theoretical or practical importance. It is concluded that the causes of differences in the career progression of male and female teachers in engineering education need to be sought elsewhere.   

Fields of education, gender and the labour market

There are gender differences in many fields of education: women are over-represented in Teacher training and education science, and in Health and welfare courses while men are over-represented in Engineering, manufacturing and construction. The fields of education with a larger share of female graduates are also those whose graduates have lower employment rates and lower earnings, while employment rates and earnings are higher in Engineering, manufacturing and construction, a field studied by only 7% of women. Even within the same field of education, employment rates and earnings are generally higher for men than for women, partly due to the different types of jobs and responsibilities men and women hold. For example, for those who studied Health and welfare women are more likely than men to work in nursing

Perseverance pays off for Ph.D. student

Lauren Griggs, a Ph.D. student in biomedical engineering, is working to increase the number of women and minorities entering the STEM disciplines – science, technology, engineering and mathematics. She was recently awarded VCU’s Susan E. Kennedy Award, which recognizes graduate students who are advancing the presence of women in education

Factors Impacting Women\u27s Participation in STEM Fields

Women are highly underrepresented in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) field professions (Beede, Julian, Langdon, McKittrick, Khan, & Doms, 2011). This has been a persistent issue since the study of mathematics and science has begun. The problem is well documented by research and there have been several efforts to remedy this issue, yet men are still dominant forces in the STEM world (Eccles, 1994; Xie & Shauman, 2003; Roberts & Ayre, 2002). It is clear that we need more women in STEM professions, but in order to make this happen, we need to determine what factors impact their participation. This thesis analyzes the way the media, stereotype threat, education, and the work environment impact women in STEM, and it concludes with some ideas for the future